Minister Charmaine Scotty leads Nauru Delegation to COP21

Minister Charmaine Scotty is currently
leading the Nauru Delegation at the 2015 Paris Climate Conference,
COP21.

Minister Scotty joins Ministers from
nearly 200 countries to begin negotiations on a draft climate
agreement as the high-level segment of the COP21
begins.

In the last week, over 40,000 delegates
have been hammering out the technical details of a deal with a new
draft text agreed on Saturday 6 December. One of the key sticking
point of these discussions is the overall level of ambition of the
Paris Climate Agreement and this speaks to issues such as the long
- term temperature (2 degrees C vs 1.5 degrees C), collective
long-term mitigation pathways and the review cycle and
updates.

Earlier this week, the Ministers from the
Pacific Small Island Developing States (PSIDS) met to discuss their
priorities including the 5 year review cycle which is gaining
momentum to be an opportunity for every party to the UNFCCC to come
back every 5 years to make deeper cuts and stronger commitments to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions to ensure global temperature
remains well below 1.5 degree Celsius.

Minister Scotty told her ministerial
colleagues that, "there are still some gaps remaining in this
review cycle". She questioned the legitimacy of the 5-year review
cycle, noting that most reviews under the UNFCCC process have been
nothing more than rubber-stamping exercise. The Minister
recalled similar initiatives, namely the review back in COP4 in
1998, periodic review of the amount of funding necessary and
available for the implementation of the Convention, the 2006 Kyoto
Protocol Article 9 review, the 2008 Kyoto Protocol article 9 review
and more recently, the 2013-2015 review whether to change the
agreed temperature limitation goal from 2 degrees C to 1.5 degrees
C.

Minister Scotty asked how this 5-year
review cycle will ensure the very survival of PSIDS? She
suggested that there should be a safety net for the 5 review cycle
to be effective and it should consider finance and means of
implementation to be made easily accessible to
PSIDS.

The points raised by Minister Scotty
received unanimous support and were later included in the PSIDS
Ministerial statement delivered to the Co-Facilitators responsible
for Ambition.